After the lugubrious interruption of the royal funerals, the debate on the religious corporations was resumed with new vigour.  Much the most effective speeches on either side were those delivered by the combatants of the two extremes, Brofferio and Count Solaro de la Margherita.  Brofferio, who regarded all convents as a specific evil, had proposed their indiscriminate abolition in 1848, directly after the promulgation of the Statute.  Cavour, he said, had then defended them.  Was he therefore, mindful of their old warfare, to vote against this Bill in order to place difficulties in the way of the Ministry?  Far from it.  If the Government were willing to abolish all the convents, so much the better; if 490, he would vote for that; if 245, he was ready to approve; if 100, yes; if 10, he would vote for 10; if one convent, he agreed; if one monk, his vote would be given for the abolition of one monk.  He would not imitate those speakers who had attempted to conjure up a canonical or theological defence of the Bill.  The Pope was probably a better theologian than he; but he denied that the Church had any prescriptive rights at all:  all her privileges and property being held on sufferance of the State, which could withdraw its toleration when it chose.  Illustrious Italians, from Dante downwards, denounced the love of power and money of the Church as the bane of Italy.  Had not Machiavelli said, “If Italy has fallen a prey not only to powerful barbarians but to whatsoever attack, we Italians are indebted for it to the Church and to nothing else”?  Respect for the intentions of the pious founder was a good thing in its way (Brofferio had the sense to see that this was the strongest argument of the opposite party), yet, logically pursued, it would have obliged us to this day to preserve the temple of Delphi with a full chapter of priests.  Some one might have got up and said, “A very interesting result”; but Neo-Hellenism did not grow in the Sardinian Chamber of Deputies.  Brofferio censured the exemption of the teaching and preaching orders—­according to him, the most mischievous of all.  He blamed the Ministry for excusing the measure on financial grounds.  Either it was just or it was unjust.  If just, it needed no excuse; if unjust, no excuse could justify it.  There was, he said, no use in trying to make the Bill appear moderate in the hopes that it would be borne more patiently by the body against which it was aimed.  The Court of Rome knew no more or less.  War to the knife or refusal to kiss the Pope’s toe:  it was all one.

As the stoutest champion of the Bill was the Beranger of Piedmont, with his rough and ready eloquence, so its most formidable critic was the old apostle of thrones and altars, who would have taken Philip II. as a model king, and Torquemada as an ideal statesman.  His onslaught was far stronger than the strictures of less out-and-out reactionaries.  It was easy, for instance, to accuse of weakness the amiable sentimentality